#103: Paris & Kona & Nice, oh my

At what point do the same usual complaints just become boring?

issue #103: Sept. 4, 2024

Yes, yes, I am running late today. It was sorta a holiday weekend, and sorta a sports weekend, and sorta life.

So we’ll just get down to it, with some big results and races in this week’s newsletter. And next week, I’m headed back to France as we start to see the peak of peak championship season. It’s like almost taper time, but you’re still got a couple more big weekends left and you’re not quite there yet — except this is for spectating and reporting, instead of racing.

- Kelly

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USA! USA!

The top line summary of the Paralympic triathlon races is that the U.S. won the most medals of any country in the discipline ever. So there. This is what happens when you invest resources into something.

Had to go with a U.S. picture. Mo Lahna & Mark Barr (Photo: Petko Beier/World Triathlon)

With 11 races, it’s hard to get into the details of all of them. Tim did a good job with the category-by-category breakdown for Triathlete in what I’m sure was a chaotic situation. I’m just going to give you a high-level overview.

My Seine recap: Any notion that the water quality wasn’t an issue here or wasn’t as big an issue as it was for the Olympics is just wrong and reflects a lack of following the para races. The para athletes, too, were told the night before that the already-rescheduled events were ‘a go’ (following promises by organizers to make decisions the night before instead of at 4 a.m. day of), and then the athletes woke up and were told ‘just kidding.’

The problem, of course, isn’t that testing is done on the morning of. It’s that there’s no logic to making a decision at 10 p.m. the night before with the caveat that another decision will be made again in the morning. That’s not really a decision.

The officials must have learned some part of that lesson, because after the rescheduled races were all rescheduled again to Monday they then confirmed the ‘go-ahead’ at 10 p.m. Sunday night and announced they would not test again in the morning. No news is good news, right?

And, of course, water was in the dreaded grey zone, where it passes World Triathlon standards but you can go deep on the third-party testing being done in the Seine and feel less confident. After swim practice earlier in the week, Kelly Elmlinger, who was the favorite in the PTS4, and Kyle Coon’s guide, Zack Goodman, had to pull out of the races sick. So, not great.

My race recap: It’s a little chaotic to follow that many races happening at the same time. I think the commentators on TV don’t even really try, they simply aim to give a highlights reel and focus on the athletes for their country’s broadcast. (Added problem: My Peacock, which was set to save the live airing so I could watch it in the morning, got very confused by the rescheduling and didn’t have the replay available.)

In terms of favorite races out of the 11: Lots of people were happy to see Lauren Parker win this time in the PTWC wheelchair race (after getting outsprinted in Tokyo) and to see Dave Ellis in the PTVI visually impaired race (after a mechanical in Tokyo).

Alexis Hanquinqant was sorta the hometown favorite and French face of the Paralympics, so it was good to see him deliver gold in the PTS4. And Spain’s Dave Molina in the PTS3 and Susana Rodriguez in the women’s VI race were also both heavy favorites — who we’d kinda tried to play up might get upset, but they didn’t get upset and they won when they were supposed to and sometimes that’s really hard to do too.

Personal emotional favorites had to be Grace Norman winning again in the PTS5 and Hailey Danz finally getting gold (after two silvers) in the PTS2.

A few other Paralympic things:

• Did you see the guy from China who swam a 1:08 100m with no arms?!

• Or Sheetal Devi, from India, (who also doesn’t have upper limbs) and became the first archer to win a medal using her feet and teeth!

• I just learned that you can’t cheer at goalball because the blind (and blindfolded) athletes have to hear the ball to respond to it. And there’s a whole set-up for blind fans to follow along.

• After this American swimmer set a world record in the 50m (27.28) she was accused of faking her disability because it’s not as visible.

• Which raises a bunch of questions and issues around 1. how rampant is cheating in the Paraylmpics (not un-rampant, particularly as it gets bigger and as each country is sorta left to their own devices to classify athletes) and 2. what categories and sports get to be in the Paralympics and what don’t (there’s a heavy bias both towards what has traditionally been viewed as a disability and towards making it more of a broadcast spectacle that’s appealing to non-disabled viewers — ie. it looks cooler on TV for someone to be missing a limb than to have a non-visible disability, something unfortunately reflected in comments, with people saying stuff like ‘they look fine, why aren’t they in the Olympics’). So those are both issues the Paralympics will have to deal with as it grows.

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Kona & Nice & here we are again

Next up: The start list for Women’s Nice is officially up. And I’ve officially started my race week spreadsheet of who/what/when/where. And so it begins. Here we arrive again at the same start lines but different.

Which means I’ve been getting a lot of questions that essentially amount to: “Is this gonna be cool? What have you been hearing? What’s the buzz?”

And I have to respond that I haven’t heard much about Nice, beyond the pros preparing. But, in reality, I haven’t heard much about Kona either. I don’t think it’s because of any assumptions or projections that can be made about Nice v. Kona; I think it’s because there are so many pro races this year that no one (even brands and sponsors) really turned their attention to the fall championships until after we got through the Olympics, etc. Hype is just now starting to build. [An aside: We’ll have our landing page up with all our Nice events, Nice merch, underwater photo shoot, and pop-up patio by next week! Stay tuned.]

I think the ~2,000 women are nervously excited to see what happens in Nice. I think there are some pros who are nervously excited to try something new. I also think all the things that were true before are still true: It was time to have a non-Kona championship to crown different athletes on different types of courses. It was time to have a non-remote-Pacific-Island championship to reach different regions of athletes, and having that in Europe, where the sport is so big, was long past due. It was time to have separate and fair women’s and men’s championship races without interference from each other and with each getting the whole stage; the argument against that no longer makes sense. And it was simply the reality that those two races couldn’t co-exist in the same place right now at the same time. Maybe they’ll be in the same place in the future, maybe they’ll rotate and come back to Kona every so many years, but right now here we are.

But, still, because it’s the time of year that the triathlon groundhog sees his shadow, the usual rumblings have started bouncing around again without irony — though, at a minimum, the echo chamber has gotten quieter. ‘Triathlon used to be great,’ we hear, at least for people who look like those who are doing the grumbling. Yet, the more I play it out in my head, the more I don’t even know how it’d be possible to go backwards at this point.

What does that look like? From a purely logistical standpoint? To cram everyone back into one day, so we can spit-polish and milk the Kona TV myth, would mean less spots now for everyone, men and women. And which do you pick: Do you go from ~2,000 men’s and ~2,000 women’s world championship spots each right now back to 1,500 men + 700 women, or do you cut it straight in half to ~1,000 men + ~1,000 women? Do you say it’s gotta stay 50-50, and tell the age-group men (who are the loudest) that they lose even more spots than they used to have back when only men got to do it? Or do you try to repackage ‘proportionality’ and tell the women they’re back to just ~700 spots out of the whole world? Look around, the mood has shifted, that’s not gonna go over even as well as it did a few years ago — and it didn’t go over that well then. The women might not be as loud when they complain, but they’ll simply move on to something new. They won’t try to win the pissing contest, they’ll just quit the sport. And so there is no good option for stuffing the cat back in this bag.

What is Women’s Nice going to be like? I don’t know. It’s well-established as not my favorite place in the world, but it’s an interesting course and an interesting field. I wasn’t sure what Kona was going to be like last year either and we ended up getting more than we realized we needed.

I don’t think it’s possible, even mathematically, to go backwards now. Which means the only option is forward to something new.

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The rest of the races

• Zell-Am See 70.3: Caroline Pohl! Establishing herself as one to watch with back-to-back 70.3 wins in the final Pro Series races. And Mika Noodt, with his course record, has quietly (sorta quietly) moved himself up in the world.

• Pozan 70.3: Denmark Olympian Emil Holm won his first 70.3.

Results: Zell-Am See 70.3, Pozan 70.3

And updated: Ironman Pro Series standings now that all the races are done except the world champs

Mark your calendars

• Sunshine Coast 70.3 this weekend, but with no broadcast and a slightly smaller start list

• T100 - Ibiza: The next big one, the weekend after Women’s Nice

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The -ish

Stuff from around our sports worth knowing about this week.

• The other big race of the weekend, which I am obsessed with: UTMB!

  • Katie Schide is, like, officially one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time now — she broke Courtney Dauwalter’s course record here (finishing in 22:09), won UTMB for a 2nd time, and won Western States & UTMB in the same summer. If you don’t know her, I’d suggest getting familiar. (Instagram/Outside Run)

  • Ruth Croft was really coming back on her, though — actually coming back on everyone at the end — which is something at that point in a race. And the men’s field got decimated overnight. (Twitter)

  • Everyone’s also making quite a lot of the fact that the guy who won, Vincent Bouillard, isn’t a full-time professional runner. And, like, no shade to him — winning that thing on your first try, as the underdog, against some of the best ultrarunners ever, is no joke, no matter how you do it. And he seems awesome. Let’s all tone down, though, our “omg he’s an amateur.” He’s a shoe engineer for Hoka, who lives in Annecy. There are jobs that are conducive to lots of training and jobs that are not, and I’d guess this is a job that is. I’d also argue that there are plenty of full-time “pro” athletes who have shittier set-ups and more financial stress and less ideal training situations. I’ve also seen tons of people “go pro” and then actually get worse, because in reality they had a better set-up before. And, unlike in triathlon, there’s really only so much running you can do. So, let’s all chill out. He trained a ton, he focused on this race, he knew what he was doing, he’s very good, he won. (The Independent/Youtube)

  • Jim Walmsley was out there cheering him on, and Courtney Dauwalter was out on course in a duck costume. (Twitter/Youtube)

  • The guy who won the local 50K next to my house earlier this year (and is a former triathlete) became the first American to ever win the OCC at UTMB Race Week. (Outside Run)

  • I also thought this was a good summary of some of the other industry things happening in Chamonix and how UTMB is cracking down on "guerrilla marketing.” (Trailmix)

• Did you know there was an XTERRA Trail Running World Champs this weekend, too, which seems like odd timing. (Endurance Sportswire)

• I’m not really a Youtube person, but this is a nice mini-doc about David Roche’s Leadville course record. (Youtube)

• Here’s the shoe breakdown for UTMB races and for the Paris marathon (men & women). (Instagram)

• Puck Pieterse took 4th in the mountain bike race at the Olympics, then went and took the white jersey and a stage win at the Tour de France Femmes a week later, then went back to the dirt and won her first mountain bike world championship this past weekend. That’s a nutty three weeks. (Escape Collective)

• Apparently the men’s road mile world record got broken this weekend and it was only 3:51. (Olympics)

• An Olympic runner from Ugandan was lit on fire by her ex-boyfriend. Part of a disturbingly common pattern of violence for female runners in Africa. (The New York Times)

• The details of this lawsuit filed against a consultant for Diana Nyad’s movie are worth reading. They include that he “faked the existence of a sanctioning organization to lend credibility to Nyad's controversial Cuba-to-Florida swim, and digitally defiled a marathon swimming database in a brazen attempt to rewrite the sport’s history in Nyad's favor.” (Defector)

• IM Chattanooga announced a new flat loops bike course and people aren’t thrilled. (Local 3 News/Feisty Triathlon)

• Did the pandemic make Olympic athletes faster? I mean probably not, but there were definitely performance jumps. (Triathlete)

• Jocelyn McCauley is out with surgery. (Youtube)

• Outside Inc bought back MapMyRun/MapMyFitness, which maybe is only super funny to me — you have to know that the Outside CEO originally made his money by selling MapMy to Under Armour at a high point when it was probably overvalued (simply from a financial sense) — but it is funny. (Axios)

• It’s part of move to create a kind of social platform on Outside. Which I went to my member dashboard to check out, and definitely don’t fully understand yet. (Fitt Insider)

• Do we need more adult rec sports in the U.S.? Yeah, probably. (New York Times)

• And seriously, cars need to stop getting bigger. If you’re freaking out about how unsafe it is to bike on the road, and how fatalities and accidents have gone up, you better not also have a large SUV. That’s just the reality. (CBC)

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One last thing

Some pictures from the Paralympics.